How to Write Attractive and Helpful Content for Your Visitors
Posted by Spyros Panagiotopoulos in Writing Content, tags: better content, better headlines, better titles, write attractive content, write content, write helpful content
Writing content that is appealing to your visitors and make them want to come back and read more, is definately a very challenging task. You should always maintain a balance between helpful and attractive writing. There are some important things that you can take into account that can really help you in the process. I’ll enumerate many of the important strategies for better writing and describe how to put them into practise effectively. Please bear in mind that i’m definately not a great writer, i’m also always learning, but i feel that i could help quite a lot of people who look for basic(and more advanced) tips on the subject.
Titles are the soul of your post
There is nothing more important than the title of your post. It is the critical moment in which your potential reader decides whether they should go on with reading. It is crucial to learn how to intrigue your readers with better titles and invite them to continue. There are, of source, some important principles that you should know about when you aim to do that:
1) Make a question, possibly an intriguing one
Since people most probably visit your website in order to get answers for various matters, it is a good idea to create titles that reflect a certain question and is always better to make it an intriguing one. For example, if you are to write an article about the global heat, it would be a nice choice to create a title like “Is global heat humanity’s next biggest problem?”. This way, you present the topic AND make it intriguing too. Those who want to know more about the subject, watch the question and since it’s most probably something they ask themselves, they keep on reading.
2) Present a “shocking” piece of information
In order for people to read a post, they really have to see some value on it beforehand. After all, first impressions really matter. Attempt to draw their attention by presenting a shocking point inside your title. To illustrate, would you most probably click a title that says “Shipwreck found yesterday” or “A thousand year shipwreck found just yesterday” ? Definately the second one would make the biggest impression. People do not just want to know about a fact, facts happen everyday. It’s the shocking value that a piece of information has that really makes it valuable and if there’s such a value in your post, you should definately use it.
3) Create an “enumerating solutions” title, generally involve numbers
Numbers are impressive and easily followed. It is always better to write “10 ways” rather than “ten ways” in your titles(unless it’s a real small number like one). Readers most times like to skim through text and lists are appealing for most of them. If you feel that there’s a better value in enumerating, do so. Do not write a title like “Tricks on how to use a deck of cards”. Instead, write something like “Top 10 card tricks”. It’s easier to spot, fancier and certainly looks quicker to read.
4) “How to” that answers a certain important question is also a good choice
The standard headlines that include a beginning like “How to…” or “Learn to” are most times a safe choice. I’d recommend them as a last resort if you can’t find another suitable title, but they most times work well in engaging the reader.
5) Combine the above
This is really the art of creating great titles and certainly needs a lot of practise. Combining 2-3 of the above when appropriate can really give your post a nice advantage compared to others. Let’s suppose that there has been discovered a method in which a person can create 10 successful websites in a month’s time. This information alone presents a shocking information. Moreover it involves numbers. Making a pretty good title is rather easy. An example would be “30 days considered enough for making 10 successful websites?”. Notice that i did not form it like “Is 30 days enough..”. The reason is that i wanted to make a rhetorical question. I wanted to state that 30 days are indeed enough and not argue about it, thus clarifying what i’m going to talk about. Notice that i wrote “30 days” instead of one month, since the first looks more impressive. Always better to say “back in 30 seconds” rather than say “back in half a minute” 
Opening sentence- Should I keep on reading?
The opening sentence is the first sentence of your post. It’s certainly the most important sentence in your whole post. If you have managed the reader to keep on reading after your title, you’re now totally engaging them with your opening. Most times you have to create a matching relationship between them. For instance, if you have created a question in your title, do not create another question in your opening, since it’ll overload your post. Instead, try to create an image to the reader or share a relevant quote. Let’s approach the title “Is global heat humanity’s next biggest problem?”. How would you open it up? A bad approach would be to say “Yes, it is. We all know about it…”. Why would a reader want to read that? It is not attractive to their eyes and does not present new information too. Such a sentence would be a reason to totally abandon the reading of the current post. A far better starting sentence would be something like: “Picture yourself in a heated container where temperature rose every day.”. Isn’t that creating pictures? Catching the eye, means you’re winning the reader.
Typically, an opening sentence is used to provide information of what is going to follow in the remaining paragraph. Like my previous sentence. While it’s a good idea to do that for your remaining paragraphs, your very first sentence should be more eye-catching. If you created a title like “How to drive like Michael Schumacher in 21 days”, why not start with a fancy question like “What is better than driving your way to the supermarket like a well known F1 racer does?”. This should elicit a smile and commit the reader to the rest of your post. Another idea would be presenting a nice fact connecting a typical driver with Formula One. Have you heard of the story where a taxi driver was taking Schumacher to the airport? There was a great deal of traffic jam and Schumacher asked the taxi driver if he could drive the taxi himself, which he finally did. This is not fiction, it really happened, it was all over the news at that time. You could take advantage of such a fact and connect it with your post, thus providing interesting information. You could say it like :
Title : “How to drive like Michael Schumacher in 21 days”
First Sentence : “Michael Schumacher’s taxi driver most probably never read this post, he would now wish he had.”
Then explain why you say that and what happened and slowly begin creating your main content idea.
How to write better and provide good and comprehensive content
There are some general tips to follow in order to write better and be understood by others. Keep in mind that most of them are just general ideas and you should be in line with them but also bypass them at times. This is the really beauty of writing. Knowing when and where to break the limits. However, to do the latter, we first need to know what the limits are:
1) Write short sentences
Do not try to say many things in one sentence. Instead, use a full stop and begin a new sentence. Long sentences tend to be a bit tiring to the eye and sometimes difficult to read and understand. Keep it plain simple to win the reader.
2) Practise Writing
There is nothing more important that writing in order to get better at it. Write and then write some more, it’s the key to getting better, as with almost every skill a person exercizes.
3) You write for others, reference them and explain
It’s important to refer to certain things using the reader as an example. It’s better to say: “you need to write better content”, than say “I would write better content”. People need to feel that you’re following their needs and not yours. It’s a good way to engage them. Also, try to explain why things work in such a way. Why would people need to write better content? Do not just say the fact but explain why it is really a fact, using clear and precise arguments, maybe also providing examples. Bear in mind that examples are the very strong persuasive means.
4) Convince
Convincing people that you write nice content is always a challenge. It makes them categorize you as a good source for reading or a spammer. There are 4 typical ways to convince a reader about a certain point.
Firstly, you could provide an expert source also stating what you want to say. People believe the authorities. If you were to learn about computer engineering, you would most probably want to learn it by an expert and not a student. Therefore, empowering an argument as an opinion of a well known authority is a good way to persuade.
The second way is to appeal to emotion. If you want your reader to believe something, you can achieve it by raising strong feelings with your writing. You may have noticed it in some newspapers and television too saying something like “This goverment must fall. People are starving and they drive luxurious cars going to glamorous meetings and not worry about the society’s problems”. This creates rage among the readers(or watchers). Thus, it leads them to believe that this goverment is really not efficient.
Another idea is to provide non argumentative arguments on why the author is a credible person. If you can convince your readers that you are a trustworthy, knowledgeable and credible person, you can convince them easier. This is why you have to create an online presence in the process of creating a website.
The last but important convincing way is using logical arguments. In order to do that efficiently, you have to provide solid arguments in form of events, examples, statistical data, researches, scientific truths and more.
One could also say that there are two more, a bit indirect ways that should be listed here. Indeed, but the important 4 are the ones mentioned above. Should you need to know them, however, i’d say a few things about them too. You could try to “compliment” the reader, saying that their judgement is key to what happens and such balanced things. DO NOT overdo it though. It could come against you if readers think you’re complimenting them to gain their trust. Moreover, you could attack the opponent’s arguments. If you’re writing against the arguments of another person, you could attack their argumets by attacking the source author itself, trying to convince people that the author is not credible. Bear in mind that the last two methods are a bit dangerous to use and you should use them with caution.
5) Try to write correctly
Most of us are not native english speakers and writers, but we need to do our best to be better understood. Try not to make grammar and spelling mistakes(use spellchecker maybe) or at least make a few of them.
Closing your post properly
This part is quite challenging. When we reach the end, we most times have nothing left to say. What we say really depends on the tone of our whole post. However, a nice idea is using the initial post object as a guide to writing the last closing paragraph OR/AND give a newer referring source that people will want to read about too. Let me do that for that post since we almost the end
Remember to work in order to improve your writing in many ways. Engaging readers is all about doing things the right way AND promoting yourself as a respectable source. Be typical and resourceful. Watch for the standard tricks, create nice titles, interesting opening sentences and write persuasive and helpful content. Learn every day and then put it into practise. After all, Sir Francis Bacon said it himself: “The great end of life is not knowledge but action.”
(wasn’t the last phrase of the great philosopher -and much more- persuasive ?:)
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A reader of the post asked my in twitter how could one write better, attractive and helpful content for an e-commerce store and also asked about SEO advices. I could not really reply them due to the length of tweets, so i’ll do it here.
In a previous post, I’ve said that e-commerce sites are difficult to monetize due to the lack of content AND the need to have certain credibility. However, there are certain ways to do that.
1) Include an articles section
The friend in twitter asked me about a fitness apparel website. I would certainly create a section discussing fitness exercizes and combining them to certain equipment and apparel that i want to sell. It is important to try to help the reader and not just trying to sell. Always remember that presale happens automatically in fact. You have to convince the reader that you are a trusted source and fulfil their needs for information in first.
2) Building Credibility
Now, this is the most important thing. DO NOT be anonymous. Include an about me section showing a picture of yours and say some things about yourself, typically relating them to your store. Also, sign your articles with your real name and not a nickname or “admin”. Create intimacy. People only buy things from those who trust.
I was also asked about SEO techniques, which i’ve discussed in a previous post here:
http://website-creation-tips.com/index.php/2009/05/27/search-engine-optimization-better-and-faster-search-engine-placement/
Hope i gave you some insight. If you want to ask anything more please do so